


Do not attract attention

by chantefable



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Action, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Cold War, Gen, M/M, Mission Fic, Suspense, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: They had attracted attention by being overly careful, which was a stupid mistake to have made.But then again, Napoleon had never been as good as he led others to believe he was.





	Do not attract attention

"No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, 

or other people restraining them from acting according to their will."

Euripides

They had attracted attention by being overly careful, which was a stupid mistake to have made, but then again, Napoleon had never been as good as he led others to believe he was. They had been vigilant, cautious of the unknown terrain, of foreign ground; they had kept their head down and sought an opportunity. They had made a move, and by that time, it had been too late: they had been already identified, transparent. Waverly was going to be furious. If Italy had been a tentative success, Turkey was shaping up to be unmitigated disaster.

Technology had let them down, because that was what always happened. It had been Napoleon's fault entirely; he had kept Kuryakin bugged, not with the humiliatingly large devices from before but a sleeker refurbished French model that was supposed to keep Sanders happy and off Napoleon's back. They never spoke of it, but Kuryakin obviously knew: to Sanders' chagrin, the feed never gave anything of substance, only data perfectly correlating with their UNCLE itinerary. Kuryakin had been deadly calm about the tracker, which only convinced Napoleon that he had been similarly bugged. He kept up his best imitation of a British stiff upper lip to cover the fact that he had not found the tracker Kuryakin had planted on _him_. (Napoleon really wasn't as good as others were led to believe he was. Had he truly been CIA's finest, he wouldn't have been expendable for suicidal ventures and nebulous inter-agency cooperation which only promised early retirement on treason charges due to fraternizing with the enemy.)

Technology had let them down because even though they never spoke of it, Kuryakin knew about the tracker and managed to dispose of it before they were intercepted and searched. But he didn't know about the other one, the one that Napoleon had planted the day before in a fit of pique, still fuming about his own inability to find Kuryakin's device. And so the second tracker pinged, still too clunky, still not unobtrusive enough, and there went plausible deniability. 

Napoleon thought serene thoughts, Gustave Courbet's _Paysage à Ornans_ , a glass of good Pinot Grigio, a warm bath – which was the only thing that brought relief to the lingering pain in his deltoid, forever mangled by a sloppy knife wound. He thought serene thoughts and did not allow himself to imagine Kuryakin's furious face. He refused to rationalize his pettiness and stupidity; what mattered at the moment was getting Kuryakin out of the building, his flawless cover blown. He listened to Teller's tense voice in his earpiece, quickly reporting the absence of documents, the deadly silence in the hall which had been bustling with activity before; the decision to abort the mission had been made even before all that. The mission had to be aborted the moment Kuryakin, with his flawless cover of a legitimate Soviet trade representative, was delayed at the entry point. A gut feeling; what was happening now, sounds of Teller making her escape, bullets, and banging doors, was more proof than had ever been necessary. 

He trusted Teller to get out, and if push came to shove, she could be sacrificed. She wasn't even British. Sanders was going to have Napoleon's head if he endangered whatever chess match was going on between the CIA and the KGB now. He had to get Kuryakin out, _right now_. He made haste while maintaining a natural pace, keeping up appearances even though his gut screamed that they had been expected all along, that there had been eyes on them, that his face was probably known.

There had to be an opening, an opportunity. There was an open door, a guard whom Napoleon killed with a lock-pick in the gut – messy, unpleasant, a wet stain on the sleeve of his suit and nausea rising, rising – a body falling from the upper floor and landing on the balcony with a heavy thud. He opened the balcony door and pulled Kuryakin to his feet. He didn't open his mouth: the nausea twitched inside his throat like an eel and guilt kept his lips glued shut; everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. Kuryakin's face was, indeed, furious. Kuryakin's face was twisted in pain; he had a dislocated shoulder. Napoleon led them out, his sleeve leaving a bloody smudge on the pristine white balcony curtain. Kuryakin hobbled slightly, gripping Napoleon tight, some ligament in his ankle obviously torn. There was no need for words.

Someone walked past at the worst possible moment, a civilian with eyes widening at their disheveled state and a cry for help dying on their lips as Napoleon softly banged their head on the wall, letting them slump unconscious. There was a dent in the plaster. The earpiece had gone quiet, just static. He didn't hear Teller breathing. 

Their luck had obviously run out even before they had left the safe-house, and Napoleon used his own sparingly, a prayer in his heart that was more emotion than actual words. Kuryakin was very heavy against his side; he wondered how Teller put up with him, how he didn't crush her at night with his weight. He thought good thoughts, the Romanesque church of St Giorgio right on the border of upper and lower Molise. Central Italy, the birthplace of all his grandparents, Napoleon's true heart. There was static in his ear, bile rising in his throat, black spots dancing in front of his eyes; he wasn't sure how he had taken the car. There were two bodies outlined by the headlights, unmoving on the ground. Napoleon's eyes saw the bell tower of St Giorgio, snatches of the inviting façade, the strong pillars. He smelled warmth, the countryside, and then blood. Kuryakin was bleeding.

He sped up, darted a look over his shoulder: Kuryakin was putting pressure on the wound. A grinding noise; Kuryakin was gritting his teeth, and there was still no sound of Teller, just static. The tires screeched. Napoleon barely saw the road.

If Kuryakin died, Waverly would be very disappointed. Possibly disappointed enough to let Oleg Vdovin, Kuryakin's curator, to do away with Napoleon. Especially if it turned out that Teller never made it out of there. 

St Giorgio felt very far away, and anyway, Napoleon had never been a good Catholic.

He wouldn't meet Kuryakin's eyes in the rear view mirror. Guilt kept him staring straight ahead, stabbed him anew in his deltoid, cramped his shoulder in a bleak imitation of Kuryakin's injury; he had let down his partner, set him up, failed to extract him in time. There was no opportunity to inspect Kuryakin's gunshot wound. Kuryakin didn't speak to him, hadn't asked about Teller; the silence spoke volumes. The car felt like enemy territory.

He didn't want Kuryakin to die. 

He took a sharp turn, only five minutes to the back-up location, the one with a contact and medical supplies, and he feared that by that time, it would already be too late, Kuryakin bleeding out (was it a gut wound? a punctured lung?), sensitive information already having changed hands and beyond retrieval, Napoleon's dubious usefulness to UNCLE thoroughly exhausted. Everything gone wrong, his own mediocre performance and under preparedness a huge contributing factor. He wondered if he sped up a little more, just a little faster and straight into a wall, he would finally reach St Giorgio again.

His earpiece cracked to life. Napoleon's tongue wouldn't move; the tip of it, pressed against the back of his teeth, was the only part of his body he was truly conscious of, the only tether to wakefulness. It was probably some adrenaline reaction, or a panic attack. He heard Teller's brief update, but he wasn't really listening; he heard Kuryakin's terse response, but it didn't register, either.

Apparently, he had parked and moved, because he was getting Kuryakin out of the car, eyes fixed on Kuryakin's ashen face. The man had bandaged himself up in the backseat somehow, and was using some folder, probably the car owner's, to apply more steady pressure on the wound. Napoleon still couldn't think straight enough to tell where exactly the bullet had hit Kuryakin's torso.

He wasn't too gentle dragging Kuryakin to the door. He wasn't overly careful. He was quick enough not to draw hypothetical eyes to them in the empty back alley, but not so frantic as to appear passionate. He got them inside, forced his jaw to unlock and stumbled over the pass-phrase ( _Sizde kibrit var mı_ , do you have any matches, who comes up with these things, really), and watched the contact settle Kuryakin down on the couch before cutting his shirt open and moving to work on the wound. Kuryakin listed his injuries and gave an estimated time-frame for clearing the safe-house. His Turkish was very good.

Napoleon didn't stay to help. He went to the tiny kitchen and lit a cigarette, and very carefully didn't turn around so that he wouldn't attract attention to the fact that he was terrified, and that he couldn't bear the thought of Kuryakin harmed.

He suspected that he was utterly transparent, and that his cover had been long blown.


End file.
